David Nebenzahl wrote:
On 12/3/2008 8:25 PM scorpster spake thus:

I just received a notice from California Edison that Tier 3, 4 and 5
rates are increasing AGAIN in the first quarter of 2009. My electric
bill is typically $400 a month. I don't think very many people fall
into Tier 1 or 2. Here's what really ****es me off: the electric
utilities fail to take advantage of clean nuclear power. They keep
wasting our money on natural gas, wind power, and all kinds of
inefficient "green" ideas but they are blind to nuclear power. If we
had nuclear power we'd only be paying a fraction of the price and it
would be good for the environment!!

As a former card-carrying anti-nuclear activist, I'm here to tell you
that "clean, cheap, reliable nuclear power" always is and still is total
bull****. (Don't know if you remember back that far, but they used to
talk about nuclear electricity rates "too cheap to meter". Hah.)

And people like me can take pretty much *zero* credit for stopping
nuclear power in its tracks, back in the 1980s; it was mostly the
terrible economics of the technology that did it in.

Regardless of the spin you hear from the nuke industry in the US,
countries all over the world are getting out of nuclear as fast as they
can. (Exceptions, of course, for North Korea, Iran, etc.)
....
Regardless of the spin from folks like you, the facts are that the
operating reactors in the US _are_ reliable, cost-competitive and as or
more environmentally friendly than equivalent generation of comparative
MWe onto the grid (which, of course, is the ultimate need).

You conveniently left out EdF (France) and the Indians and Chinese, S
Korea, as well as the current list of license applications for new US
plants in your list of "except for's". EdF is, in fact, making serious
inquiries into entering the US market.

_IF_ (the proverbial "big if") the C-sequestration and
hybrid/electric-car folks have any intention whatsoever of doing
anything useful, they will simply have to accept that for the
foreseeable future conventional nuclear is the only alternative
generation technology available in anything even remotely approaching a
short term time frame that has the capacity and reliability required to
make a significant difference in the generation mix.

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